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Faster processors, speedier memory, longer battery life and a rose gold finish — what more do we need from a new MacBook? We love Apple gear, but it’s possible we’re getting addicted to the “wow” factor.

Add that to Prince’s untimely death, and the dearth of streaming options for listening to his music, and we’ve got a lot to talk about. It’s all in this week’s free Cult of Mac Magazine, along with reviews of Amazon’s new Echo smart speakers and 12 awesome Apple Watch tricks that prove Cupertino’s wearable doesn’t need a “killer app.”

Here are this week’s top stories.

Samsung will launch its next-generation Gear S3 smartwatch later this year, according to a new report, and the company has teamed up with a Swiss jeweler to create a luxury version that could take the fight to the all-gold Apple Watch Edition.

The Apple Watch celebrated its first birthday on Sunday and, while Apple has yet to publicly disclose sales figures, it seems that the company’s debut wearable device had quite the impressive debut year!

According to analysts, Apple likely sold around 12 million Apple Watches over the past year: around twice the number of iPhones it sold in the first twelve months of Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.

Released on Friday as a short-lived Tidal exclusive, Beyoncé’s latest album, entitled Lemonade, is now available to download via iTunes — comprising 12 music tracks, a one-hour film produced for HBO, and a “digital booklet.”

The $17.99 Lemonade has so far received strong critical reviews, although we’ll have to wait and see whether it can come close to achieving her last album’s record-breaking sales feat, which became the fastest-selling album in iTunes history.

Wall Street seemingly loves to be down on Apple, but if you want some figures to remind you of what a massive profit-generating giant the company is, look no further than the latest numbers collected by SiliconValley.com.

Analyzing the stats coming out of the top 150 Bay Area tech companies for 2015, Apple not only ranked number one in every important metric, but also recorded profits of $53.7 billion in 2015 — which translates to roughly 40 percent of the entire $133 billion Silicon Valley profit pool for the year.

And that’s not all.

Elon Musk has called the Apple Car an “open secret” and now, in a new interview, Ford CEO Mark Fields say that the automaker is acting on a “working assumption” that an Apple Car is not too far away.

Ford wouldn’t be willing to take on a contract manufacturing job, however — since it’s not into the “handset, commodity base business” as Fields puts it.

As the Apple supplier which came under fire a few years ago when one of its 15 year old workers died of pneumonia, iPhone manufacturer Pegatron has opened its doors to the media in an effort to show how much things have changed.

In the process, it sheds light on one of the hidden sides of iPhone production — and the means by which companies like Pegatron try and crack down on supply chain leaks about future Apple devices.

A billionaire serial entrepreneur from China, whose company LeEco offers an ecosystem of streaming video services, electric vehicles, television sets and smartphones, has lambasted Apple for failing to innovate — and says it is failing in China as a result.

“As an industry leader, Apple should be developing more cutting-edge products,” he said. “The iPhone was still a leader five years ago after being launched in 2008 but now the concept has fallen behind.”

Kind of funny considering that LeEco recently rushed to beat Apple to release a smartphone without a 3.5mm headphone jack!

After the craziness of the week, Sundays are the perfect day for kicking back and sampling some of the delights to have graced the App Store over the past week.

From self-destructing messaging keyboards to massive group chats to a fun zombie blasting game, we’ve combed through the recesses of the app marketplace to bring you the juiciest cuts that will make your remaining time until Monday as memorable as it can be.

Check out our picks below.

This week on The CultCast: Why the new iPad Pro screen is “practically perfect”; stories from The Cult of Mac; our most anticipated WWDC 2016 announcements; a look at Apple’s newly updated MacBooks; Apple’s secret plan to create hit TV shows; and, have you ever wondered how rich you’d be if you invested in Apple’s IPO instead of buying its computers? We break down the numbers.

Our thanks to Freshbooks for supporting this episode. FreshBooks is the easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help small-business owners get organized, save time invoicing and get paid faster. Get started now with a 30-day free trial.

Most fitness apps seem obsessed with calories. Go for a run, and your Apple Watch tells you how many calories you burned. Scan a barcode and MyFitnessPal tells you how many calories are in the food you are about to eat.

So what exactly are calories, and does counting them really help you achieve your fitness goals?

Court filings from several law enforcement organizations say that people may just stop helping with police with their investigations if Apple gets its way in an iPhone encryption case in Brooklyn.

The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Association of Prosecutor Attorneys, and the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York all presented their arguments to try to convince the presiding judge that the iPhone maker is subverting centuries of law by refusing to help in a drug case.

Cupertino is about to crack down on non-native Apple Watch apps.

The company posted a new requirement on its developer site that says that in the near future, all new apps must run natively on the device and originate in the watchOS 2 development kit. This new policy could finally get us some Apple Watch apps that work as well as we’d like them to.

You know, instead of some of the ones we have no, which kind of don’t.

Designers have found a lot of interesting ways to cover your precious laptop, but this might be a new one: a marble MacBook case that gives your device a cool, classic look. This one comes courtesy of Elemnt and rawbkny, the same people who found a way to give you a wooden keyboard, and this is easily their most ambitious project yet.

“We have managed to cut down the marble slab to 0.8mm thickness, backed with fiberglass and 3M pressure sensitive adhesive,” Elemnt’s Mikhail Novikov said in an e-mail. “The marble cover is rigid yet flexible enough to wrap the MacBook all around using specific lasercut lines to allow the edges to bend. The marble is sourced directly from Milan, Italy.”

Developer David Repas just wants to give you some free stuff with no obligation on your part.

“I’m just one guy trying to create a company around giving stuff away,” he tells Cult of Android. “I’m not into people tracking, annoying users or any of that funny business.”

The app, Finagle, is the simplest we’ve seen. Download it for iOS or Android, add in your email and mobile number and boom, you’re set. Simply look at the latest giveaway (Repas is offering a Pebble Time smartwatch currently) and you’re entered a random drawing to win.

Getting free stuff is never this easy. What’s the catch?

Apple’s most recent keynotes have been a little… boring. Even die-hard fans have been left disappointed by the lack of action and surprises, but with WWDC 2016 right around the corner, many have high hopes that Apple’s about to buck that trend.

Apple’s keynote will offer our first sneak peeks at iOS 10 and the next big upgrades to OS X, watchOS, and tvOS — plus possible refreshes for Apple Watch and various Macs. Will these things make up for the lack of excitement?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we talk about (argue over) all things WWDC!

The rose gold MacBook may be the most beautifully boring new Apple product released in 2016, but once you crack it open, the super-slim MacBook gets a lot more interesting.

Rather than going with the typical teardown procedure, the YouTubers at What’s Inside decide to take a grinder to the rose gold MacBook’s Retina display. Unbelievably, the sleek MacBook still worked after they cut halfway through the screen.

Check out what’s behind the glass in this unconventional MacBook teardown video.

Progress on the Apple Car is coming along faster than anticipated after Project Titan hit some speed bumps earlier this year.

Based on a batch of new hires, it appears that Apple Car parts may have already entered the prototyping phase at the company’s Product Realization Lab, where machinists and engineers produce and test product designs.

Today is Earth Day. That’s good news for the environment — and great news for your wallet!

To celebrate, we’re offering an extra $10 for every product sold on our gadget buyback program through the end of the weekend. Just use the promo code “earthday” when you get your quote and you’ll grab the extra green.

Apple is going hard on Earth Day. Company stores changed their Apple logos green. The App Store has a week-long green app promotion. And today the company has released not one, but two ads.

The second Earth Day video from Apple features Siri and Liam hanging out talking about kale smoothies until Apple’s digital assistant meets its demise.

Watch the new ad below:

Apple may become one of the first foreign companies granted a permit to open a retail store in India without sourcing 30 percent of its products from inside the country.

While this rule has previously proven to be a hurdle for foreign brands, in Apple’s case the Indian government appears likely to overlook it on the grounds that Apple is a “state-of-the-art” company manufacturing “cutting-edge technology.”

Apple has changed its homepage and released a new video to celebrate Earth Day, the annual show of support for environmental protection — and an area which has been a big focus of Tim Cook during his time as CEO at Apple.

Check out Apple’s work below.

Dublin, the largest and capital city of Ireland, may finally be about to get its first Apple Store.

Apple is reportedly in talks with a developer group called the Natrium consortium to open up a flagship retail store in Dublin’s city center —  possibly based on the ground floor of an iconic former department store, bought last year for €29 million ($33 million).

Apple will drop its incremental “s” iPhone release next year in favor of jumping straight to the iPhone 8, claims Barclays analyst Mark Moskowitz.

Moskowitz backs up previous suggestions that the iPhone that launches in 2017 will boast the biggest upgrade since 2014’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus — with OLED displays and wireless charging, but lacking a physical home button. He predicts the massive revamp will lead to what he calls a “mega cycle” upgrade.

As for this year’s iPhone 7? He’s not so optimistic.

From saying that he doesn’t want to be stuck in the Apple ecosystem to advising Apple to build an Android phone, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has said a lot of things that probably don’t go down too well at his former company.

His latest comments, however, put him more directly in the sights of Tim Cook — as Woz uses a new interview to take a shot at Apple’s tax payments. His thoughts? The company should pay more than it does. Half of everything it earns, in fact!